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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27209668">Deeplight Cavern</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashendaria/pseuds/Ashendaria'>Ashendaria</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>World of Warcraft</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Lovecraftian, Psychological Horror, Undead</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 08:27:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,049</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27209668</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashendaria/pseuds/Ashendaria</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A group of Worgen and humans civilians, fleeing for their life in front of the Forsaken assault, find a mysterious refuge inside a deep, gigantic cavern illuminated by massive crystals. But not everything is good in this new life, and despite the issues of food, water and home being resolved, dark powers awaken in what could very well have been a tomb for something a lot more ancient. Young Helena Dustvale will have to make a choice, to decide how to live her life and to, maybe someday, find an answer for the curse that has befallen her village.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Deeplight Cavern</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Rising from her bed and a disturbed rest, Helena Dustvale jumped down on the cold floor, her small feet landing right next to her socks. As the veil of sleep lifted off, her innocent smile disappeared, slowly replaced by a serious expression, befitting of this now dreadful place. She walked around a bit, washing her face and her long, disheveled black hair with some cold water, before donning her usual, everyday clothes : a simple linen tunic, pants and leather boots. She took a glance in the mirror. Her small, youthful frame seemed healthy enough, but even she could not mistake the toll the recent times had taken on her once cute face. She seemed way older than her actual fifteen years of existence.</p><p>Grabbing the Shortsword her father left behind, strapping it to her waist, she silently crept toward the door. She had nothing to do in her ever dustier house, and so she resolved to go outside to take a walk. Maybe something was different today ? Maybe someone was there?</p><p>As she crossed the threshold, her hopes were quickly dashed. The village was as still as ever, and just as empty. The usual blue light emanating from the crystals on the roof of the gigantic cavern covered the settlement in a gloomy, mysterious blanket. Although the materials used to build the surrounding houses were unorthodox to say the least, using a strange type of wood from gigantic mushrooms growing in the nearby marsh, the architecture was unmistakably of Gilnean origins. Still, although it was the pride of the small group of survivors that reached this place, it was a far cry from the grandeur of their homeland.</p><p>Walking down the main road, she tried her best not to look at the occasional shade wandering about. Those poor souls were all that were left by the inhabitants. Only Helena had, inexplicably, escaped this fate. Floating around, entirely white and ethereal, they roughly looked like those that once lived here, ghosts in all aspects of it. They, mostly, ignored her as she walked nearby. She just had to avoid looking at them. It was the most important thing. If she looked, they would look back. She shivered, remembering the terrifying time she tried to keep watch of her slightly older neighbor as an experiment, and of the nightmare that went on after that, nearly claiming her life in the process. Simply remembering the horror that happened filled her mind with dread, and the surroundings seemed to dim down ever so slightly in response.</p><p>Instead, she directed her gaze to the distant ceiling. The rock was littered with veins of blue crystal. Those were the origin of the blue light that flooded the massive cave, and the reason this place had neither night nor day. Deep into the earth, deep down in the unexplored depths of Azeroth, such a mystical, strange place had existed for untold times. It was by pure luck that their little group had landed here. Helena was a few years younger at that time, and she was reminded of the story her parents told her.</p><p>It all began with the Cataclysm, and the Forsaken. Gilneas was broken, and the Worgen curse ran rampant. Chaos was everywhere. The dead walked and invaded them, while the people of their Kingdom fell to the Curse and went feral, howling into the hills. It took some time for some semblance of order to come back, and for a cure to be found, so that the Worgen could get their mind back. It was the first time Helena was abandoned, as her parents, protecting her, were bitten and joined the Worgen. She managed to stay hidden and remain human, and it took months before she could to get reunited with them, their sanity restored. To her young mind, their new wolf-like appearance was a wonder, and instead of fear, she felt jealousy. Of course, they never accepted transferring the Curse to her, and she remained as she was. Reunited, the Dustvale family decided to help restore their Kingdom to its former glory. While Helena worked in a small military camp in the hills of Gilneas, doing everyday chores to help, her father and mother took arms to push back the tides of the Forsaken.</p><p>War was all they knew for some time, and it seemed, at some point, that they could reverse the situation. Then came the Plague. The dozens of people in Helena's camp could not join the Gilnean evacuation and were trapped in the hills in front of a massive army from the Horde. They had to flee, as Forsaken troops followed on their tail. They had no hope to win such a battle, they had to survive and fight another day. They ran for days, through the hills and forests of the Kingdom, nearing exhaustion, until they suddenly discovered a previously unknown opening into a mountain. They later theorized that this place was opened by the Cataclysm itself, tearing the earth apart to reveal this entrance. Devoid of options, they decided to make their last stand in it and to use the small entrance as a trap for their pursuers. Little did they know, once inside, that the small cave went on and on, going down into the dark depths. After several small assaults from the Forsaken, that they managed to push back, using the advantageous terrain to inflict severe losses to their enemies, they decided to go further down, hoping they would find an opening on the other side, as a mean of escape.</p><p>Torches in hand, the roughly forty Worgens, as well as a few still human children, Helena included, went down. And down. For what seemed like days, they walked, never again seeing their enemies. At some point, some of them were close to losing their mind from the oppressive atmosphere inside of the cave, the fear of being trapped under the earth, and the constant darkness. As they were about to break down, a blue light started to flood in the rough stone corridor. Walking toward it, the survivors discovered, mesmerized, a land they would never have imagined could exist.</p><p>The light came from a massive cavern. It was of such a size that, even with the blue light slightly lighting up the place, it was impossible to see the walls of stone on the other side, for it disappeared far into the darkness. Some of the Gilneans even wondered if they had reached the center of Azeroth itself. They certainly seemed to have walked long enough for that. It was a place of gloom and wonders both. They had arrived high in the air, looking down from a stone plateau on the lands beneath. A small path led them to ground level, a path that, for some of them, seemed too convenient to be a natural occurrence. Yet, the thought of what it could mean creeped them out. What manner of being could live down there?</p><p>The first place they reached as they walked down the path was the same one Helena had now walked to, stopping in front of it: the Endless Marsh, as they named it. Surprisingly, it seemed this cave, which they resolved to name the Deeplight Cavern in time, had managed to develop a small ecosystem of its own. The marsh was the most evident proof of this: covered in mud and dirty water where it was easy to drown if one stopped moving, massive treelike mushroom were sprouting randomly, obscuring the view. Mostly white and ice-blue in color, those were absolutely inedible, but, as the survivors discovered quickly, they made excellent building materials. The first walk through the marsh had been hard on them, their pace slowed down by the sticky mud and treacherous pitfall.</p><p>Even then, it was way less dangerous than it was now. Helena grabbed a small rock on the ground, then started walking on the stone road they had built to make navigating the place easier. Stone was obviously in abundance in Deeplight, which had made it quite easy to gather the necessary materials to construct it. She walked for a few minutes in complete silence, the terrible smell of the marsh attacking her nose once again. When it was clear that, once again, no one had come to meet them down there, being now able to see the dark and empty opening up on the plateau, she decided to turn back, her patrol now unnecessary. Still, she got closer to the edge of the stone road and, for a moment, looked down into the mud and dirty water. After a few seconds, she threw the rock in it. Instantly, there was a reaction. Bubbles erupted on the surface and the smell worsened tenfold. From the mud, a bloated form covered in disgusting patches of white and black fur erupted, exposing rotting flesh and darkened muscles and bones to the eye. As always, Helena felt absolute horror from this sight. Another beast swam to the surface, and another, all converging toward the rock that disturbed the water. How many of those were there now? She was thankful that they seemed to need the marsh to survive, or they would have flooded the cavern long ago.</p><p>Walking down toward Deeplight village, she was reminded of the origin of this plague. It had started when all went down and the other villagers reported hearing the voices. The mood had worsened, progressively, after a few years of relative prosperity in their new home beneath the surface. Thanks to the few hunters they had in their group, they had managed to breed new generations of dogs to keep them company. Then, someday, for some unexplainable reason, all of the pets went mad. Seemingly possessed, they all ran together toward the marsh and jumped down into the mud, sinking, without moving. The villagers didn't have the time to reach them to try and save them. All of the dogs were swallowed and drowned at the same time.</p><p>But if that was true, why were they not dead? Why were they still moving, despite rotting away? Why were they breeding in the mud, filling the marsh more and more? How could they sense the slightest disturbance in the water and swarm their prey, tearing it apart, eating it ravenously like a pack of famished Ghouls? What unholy curse took them all and made them claim the Endless Marsh, in death, as their new home?</p><p>Those questions went unanswered until the last days of Deeplight Village. First, it was the dogs. Then, the people themselves. Only Helena was spared, and she never understood what made them lose their minds. As time went on, violence surged in the village. People started to beat each other for no apparent reason. Then, the first death happened. Then another. And after a few days, an orgy of violence erupted. For the second time in her life, she survived by hiding, while the entire population was killing each other in the streets. Crying under her bed, Helena waited for what seemed like an eternity. At some point, she fell asleep. When she woke up, silence was all she could hear.</p><p>More questions waited for her outside. Why was there not a single body, despite all the dried blood ? Why were the people still there, wandering around, but now looking like ghosts? And why, why was it so dangerous to look at them for too long? Regularly, she could see her parents wandering around in the streets of the village. She had tried calling to them in the past, to no avail. The way they looked back at her terrified her, making her run away. After a few times, she started avoiding them, no matter how painful it was. She learned not to look at them. Ignoring them seemed to work, as they seemed to ignore her too.</p><p>Concluding her patrol, she stood on a nearby, rocky hill, close to the village. They had built a watchtower on it, just in case. Habits of the old War die hard. Climbing it, she had a great view of Deeplight Cavern. She could see the river of clean water beneath her, the main reason the village had been built in this place. Munching on a few fist-sized gray mushrooms that grew everywhere in this place, one of the main sources of food the Gilneans now had, and actually quite tasty in a stew, she looked farther. She could see the endless stone plains of the cavern, some walls in the distance, the Fields of Crystals too. An interesting place where gigantic white crystals grew from the earth itself. When the nearby natural vents ejected hot steam in the air, a reaction occurred with the crystals, which, in turn, started producing white gas. This gas was inflammable but tended to burn inexplicably slowly. In a small feat of engineering that would meet approval from the Gnomes, the villagers created street lamps with gas containers that could be connected to them. That way, they could light up their streets in a brighter way than the natural blue light of the cavern. The color of the flames was also a familiar, comforting sight for them.</p><p>Eating her last mushroom, Helena sighed. She could, of course, start exploring the rest of Deeplight Cavern. Maybe she would, soon. There were still places that were too far for the eye to see, even from the tower. There were more mysteries in this place, she was sure of it. Like the one in her room.</p><p>As if she was in a trance, she darted back to her home, until she stood near her bed. She reached beneath it and pulled back a small, black box of stone. This was her treasure. She had found it in the Endless Marsh one day and had bought it back here. Opening the box, she admired what was in it: a marvelous necklace: what looked like golden tendrils, or maybe tentacles, surrounding a shiny black stone that reminded her of the night sky she missed so much. She didn't wear it, because she thought it was too beautiful to be worn by anyone, even a cute young girl like herself. Looking deep into the stone, she felt a calmness in her. The voices came back, as always. They were talking to her, gently, telling her stories she couldn't understand, talking about mysteries that were not made for the human mind. She felt at peace.</p><p>And then...The cold. The terrible cold. A drop of sweat ran down her spine as panic irresistibly built up in her mind. Deeplight Cavern was usually comfortably lukewarm, and it never changed. Except when she let the box opened for too long. A strong impact made her jump and scream in surprise and fear. In a panic, she grabbed her sword and turned her head toward its source, knowing full well what she would see. He was here, just behind the window. His big, dark hand resting on it, black goo dripping from it. A hooded figure was standing there, darkness obscuring his face. Only two green, shining eyes were visible, fixated on her. On the box. The terror was so intense she nearly fainted. But it was not the first time. She knew what she had to do. Looking down, she closed the box and looked back up. No one was there. Her small sword in hand, she went outside, courageously, and, walking beneath the mysterious blue light of the crystals, searched for the hooded monster. Deeplight Village was as empty as always. Only a handprint made of black goo, still on the window, was proof of this event.</p><p>She hated the monster. He came every time she looked at her treasure. He wanted to steal it. But she refused to let him have it. It was her necklace. The voices talked to her and told her they loved her. That they had chosen her. The creature had no right to take it. Breathing deep, she calmed down and took the box with herself, putting it in her pocket. There was absolutely nothing to do today, and it seemed it wasn't a day where someone would come to contact them. They had sent someone to the surface once to assess the situation in Gilneas, but there had been no contact since. Was the war still going on? Were people coming to save them soon? Every day, she did this small patrol, hoping to glance new faces, in vain. The solitude was torture, to the point that she would even welcome the Forsaken, as long as they'd talk to her instead of killing her on the spot. How many days had it been outside since she started those patrols? Since Deeplight Village died? She didn't even know. There was no time in this place, no day, no night. Only this constant blue light, that doused everything in a mysterious, eerie feeling. How could she have known that the man they had sent was still in the caves leading to the surface? How could she have known he was lying still on the ground, as he had for weeks now, buried under a mountain of rubbles, crushed by them, the rocks now blocking the way out? How could she have known that no help would ever come, that no one even knew she was down there?</p><p>Thinking back on her time on the watchtower, Helena decided to move. She went around several homes, gathering supplies, wanderlust now in her heart. She would explore the cavern. Maybe she'd find other treasures there? The voices seemed to think so. They often told her to go toward what the villagers had decided was the east, a place they had never seen the end of. Who knows what could be found, so far in Deeplight Cavern? Closing the door, her bag on her shoulder, armed with her trusty sword, the box in her pocket, the voices silent for now, she set to explore those distant lands, leaving behind a village filled with the dead, their empty eyes following her as she passed, unaware that they, in fact, always looked at her when she wasn't looking herself.</p><p>So disappeared the last Gilnean of Deeplight Village, as the Old One walked with her.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for reading!<br/>Sometimes, our dreams can be incredible allies for an artist. I've been writing (in French mostly, I'm trying my hands at English recently) for many years now, but I never expected to write this story. I do play World of Warcraft regularly, and one night, I was convinced that Deeplight Cavern was a real place, in my dream it was an area that could be visited, but also extremely dangerous, with some seriously disgusting stuff in it, like the undead dogs. When I woke up, I still had my eyes filled with this land of wonders and dangers, and I decided to write a story about it while it was still fresh in my mind.<br/>As of yet I have other projects to work on, but if enough people find interest in this story, I can imagine the possibility of making it a series and add multiples chapters. Deeplight Cavern has numerous secrets, horrors and wonders to discover, and I'd love to show them someday.<br/>Thank you and have a good day !</p></blockquote></div></div>
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